General

The topic areas on this page
contain links to step by step instructions as to how to edit your
course pages, add resources, activities and other
goodies...

Thanks to Jacqui Land from
Papanui High School for helping get this started and Mark
Callagher at Wellington College for the Useful Links list.

If you find any instructions
here that need updating (the Moodle site is upgraded from
time-to-time so this can happen), please contact Chris Walker
(wa@burnside.school.nz).

Topic 1

Adding
Resources

The starting point for your Moodle page is providing your
students with some information - whether it's a file to download
and work with, a page showing information, a weblink to a useful
site, or a video they can watch online.

Topic 2

Adding
Activities

Moodle is
designed by and for education. So there are a whole lot of
activities that you can add to your page for students to interact
with.Forums
are the most popular and useful, so they get a section of their
own below. Here are some other activities that are also widely
used on this site:

Assignments are
online dropboxes where students can submit work for you to
grade and/or comment on.

Moodle offers you 4 different options for Assignments:

Upload a Single File: This type allows a
student to upload a file (for example a word-processed document
or an image) for the teacher to grade and provide comments. If
you have a single assignment you want to collect online, this
is the type to use.

Advanced Uploading of Files: This allows for a
student to upload multiple files. If you wish to have a dropbox
that stays open for classwork throughout the year, rather than
just for a single assignment, this is the type to use.

Online Text: Rather than uploading a file, the
students write directly into a blank page provided by this
Assignment. This is then graded by the teacher.

Offline Activity: This is rarely used, but
assumes that the work was done by the student offline, but the
teacher wants to grade it online.

Chosen which Assignment Type you want? Click on the appropriate
Step-by-Step instructions below for guides to adding them to
your page:

Glossaries are
lists of key terms and definitions for your course. You can set
them up yourself or have students enter key terms and grade
their entries. This can then be used in conjunction with the
'Random Glossary Entry' block to have a 'Word of the Day'
appear on your course page.

Topic 3

News and
Forums

Forums are an excellent communication tool. Students enrolled in
your course receive automatic email notifications whenever a post
is made on one of your forums. They can also be used for online
discussions, question-and-answer sessions and sharing
resources.

There are two main types of Forums on this site:

1. News
Forums come are standard with all Academic Course pages;
and look like this:

Topic 4

Using
Blocks

'Blocks'
are the technical term for the boxes that appear on one or both
sides of a Moodle Page. Your pages come with a few blocks as
'standard', but there will be some you want to keep and some you
want to delete. And there may be others you want to add to help
customise your pages.

To add a block to your page, click the 'Turn Editing On'
button. A box called 'Blocks' will pop up on the right hand
side of the page (you may need to scroll down to see it). Click
on 'Add' to see a list of different types of blocks you can add
to your page.

Here is a list of commonly-used blocks, with descriptions of
what they do: